Earth Abides

What made life anyway? Many people had asked that question-even Koheleth, the preacher, was far from the first. And each had come up with a different answer, except those who admitted that no answer could be found.

Here was he, Isherwood Williams, a strange mingling of realities and fantasies and pressures and reactions, and there all outside was the vast empty city with misty rain falling upon the long empty streets, and the twilight now beginning to deepen. Between the two, him and everything outside him, there lay some kind of. strange bond; as one changed, so the other changed also.

It was as if there were a vast equation with many terms on each side, and yet only two great unknowns. He was on one side; x, perhaps, you could call him; and on the other side was everything which was called the world. And two sides of the equation always were trying to keep more or less in balance and never quite managed it. Perhaps the real balance only came with death. (Perhaps that was what Koheleth in his fine disillusioned mind was thinking when he wrote “The living know that they shall die; but the dead know not anything.”) But, this side of death, the two halves of the equation tried always to be in balance. If the x side changed and he Ish felt within him the pressure of some gland or if he suffered shock or if there was even something so simple as that he grew bored, then he did something, and that changed the other side of the equation, if only a little, and then there was again a temporary balance. But if on the other hand, the world outside changed, if there was a catastrophe wiping out the human race, or if merely it should stop raining, then the x side, being Ish, would also have to change, and that would mean more action, and then there would be again a temporary balance.

And who could say whether in the long run one side or the other side of the equation began more of the actions?

Then, before he really thought what he was doing, he had risen to his feet, and on second thought he knew that he had done so because again a feeling of desire had stirred within him. The equation had got out of balance, and he had risen restlessly to set it right again, and already he was affecting the world because Princess had leaped up at his rising and was wandering about the room. Yet at the same time he heard the rain beat a little harder against the window. Then he looked up at it to see what was happening. And so the world had also pressed in upon him and caused him to do something. And after that he set out to get himself some supper.

The almost complete removal of man, though in some ways an unprecedented earthly catastrophe, had not in the slightest affected the earth’s relation to the sun, or the sizes and locations of the oceans and continents, or any other factor influencing the weather. Therefore, the first autumn storm which swept down from the Aleutians upon the coast of California was ordinary and conventional. Its moisture extinguished the forest-fires; its raindrops washed from the atmosphere the particles of smoke and dust. Behind it a brisk wind swept down cool and crystal-clear and air from the northwest. The temperature dropped sharply.

Ish stirred in his sleep, and gradually came to consciousness. He was cold. “The other side has changed,” he thought, and pulled up another blanket. He grew warm. “O prince’s daughter!” he thought dreamily, “Thy breasts are like two…” And he drifted to sleep.

In the morning the house was chilly. He wore a sweater as he got himself his breakfast. He considered building a fire in the fireplace, but the cooler weather had also made him feel more active, and so he thought that he would not stay indoors much that day.